Leaders from the eurozone countries will meet in Paris for their first ever summit later Sunday in another attempt to find a joint response to the financial crisis which is devastating Europe.
"This meeting's purpose is to draw up a joint action plan for the euro area member states and the European Central Bank (ECB) in response to the current financial crisis," the French government, which holds the European Union (EU) rotating presidency, said on its website.
The financial crisis, which originated in the United States, has taken its toll on Europe over the past two weeks.
Despite desperate efforts by individual European countries to bail out their troubled banks and the injection of billions of euros into the financial system by the Frankfurt-based ECB, the past week saw the most turbulent days in the history of European markets.
Europe's major markets plummeted for a fifth straight day on Friday, with the FTSEurofirst 300 index of top European shares falling 7.8 percent on the day, down by 22 percent for the whole week, which was its worst ever performance.
Panic in the markets came partly from lack of a joint European response to the financial crisis. So far, European countries have been fighting the crisis on their own rather than working on a transnational plan.
In urgent bids to find solutions, French President Nicolas Sarkozy hosted a meeting with leaders from the EU's big four, namely France, Germany, Britain and Italy, but the mini summit failed to produce any concrete results except a call for coordination.
A later monthly gathering of finance ministers from the EU and the euro zone also fell short of any Europe-wide action.
It is the first time that eurozone leaders meet without other EU counterparts. Germany had been against the idea of the eurozone summit for fear of fermenting division within the EU.
The meeting comes only days away from a regular EU summit starting in Brussels on Oct. 15, which highlights urgency of the current situation.
Ahead of the summit, Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel met Friday at the Charles de Gaulle memorial in Colombey-les-Deux- Eglises in eastern France. They said a coordinated solution was necessary to calm European markets.
"Germany and France are united in that we need an agreed upon, coherent reaction in the eurozone to the international financial crisis," Merkel told reporters at a joint press conference with Sarkozy.
Merkel repeated her objection to the idea of setting up a Europe-wide bailout fund modeling after the U.S. plan, which France reportedly favors.
Sarkozy said the eurozone countries were working a joint solution to the financial crisis.
"We are working, we know where we want to get to and how we want to get there, but first we want to coordinate between the euro zone countries and then all of Europe," he said.
Sarkozy declined to provide any details. He said he will meet with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in Paris hours before the eurozone summit.
"There is in this initiative the will to maximize the chances of coordination even if everyone has noticed that Gordon Brown, the English, is not part of the euro zone," he added.
France's daily paper Le Figaro reported Friday that the eurozone leaders may consider the feasibility of using the British bailout plan as a "reference."
The British government announced on Oct. 8 a massive rescue plan which would inject 50 billion pounds (87 billion U.S. dollars) into its banks and to provide guarantee totaling 250 billion pounds for interbank lending.
Britain has urged other EU countries to follow suit so as to encourage banks to start lending to each other, but the call has so far received cool response.
Germany, Europe's largest economy, was scheduled to unveil a large-scale national bailout plan on Sunday evening, which media reports said would be similar to the British one.
Merkel said she will outline the plan to the leaders of the other 14 eurozone countries at the upcoming summit.
But the German Chancellor defined the expected European response to the financial crisis as a "toolbox of instruments," which would allow each country to choose their own.
Source:Xinhua
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